‘Gone Girl’ Writer Gillian Flynn to Write Entire First Season of ‘Utopia’ For David Fincher

Back in February, we found out that director David Fincher would reteam with Gone Girl writer Gillian Flynn to remake a British conspiracy thriller series called “Utopia” for HBO. At the time, we weren’t sure the full extent of the involvement of either party, but in the wake of the excellent Gone Girl hitting theaters this past Friday (read my review here), more about the project is coming to light. Unlike “House of Cards,” a show Fincher only directed the first two episodes for, the director will get behind the camera for every episode of the first season of “Utopia.” And now Flynn has revealed that she’ll write every episode of the first season herself.

Speaking with Buzzfeed, Flynn recounted the tale of how the project came to be. Fincher reportedly told her, “I don’t want a big writers room, I want a voice,” and since the pair presumably worked well together on Gone Girl, Flynn’s was just the voice he was looking for.

I was all set to start [my next novel] — I was really excited. I’d pretty much signed off on Gone Girl, and I got the message from David — it was a text — ‘Hey, got this TV thing. It’ll take up the next year of your life. Are you in?’ I was like, of course I’m in. You don’t even have to tell me what it is. I’m in.

The series follows a group of people who find a graphic novel called “The Utopia Experiments” that predicts disasters, and a shadowy organization called The Network that tries to hunt them down as the group attempts to stop the disasters from happening. Sounds like a cool premise, and I can’t wait to see how the HBO version turns out.

In the meantime, it sounds like fans will have to wait a bit longer for Flynn’s fourth novel, which she describes as “a big, folkloric tale of American murder.” Man, that sounds great, too. Maybe Fincher will direct a movie version someday.

Ben is a writer living in Los Angeles, California. His work has been featured at ScreenRant.com, FirstShowing.net, MySpace.com, GeekTyrant.com, and many more sites across the web. Some of his favorite movies include The Rocketeer, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Tombstone, Lucky Number Slevin, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Collateral, Double Indemnity, Back to the Future and The Prestige. Follow him on Twitter: @BenPears.